oil - Johnston Dustin Johnston Professor Z. VandeZande...

Johnston Dustin Johnston Professor Z. VandeZande English 165.022 November 22, 2007 Oil Dependency; Its Economic And Environmental Ramifications One of the biggest problems in today’s society is one that many people know about but try to ignore none the less. This problem is our apparent dependency on nonrenewable petroleum products, primarily oil. The whole of our civilization today is based on the idea that we will never run out of this resource and that it is ever lasting. The majority of the United States is literally built on this problem because oil is the base element in products like asphalt, and tar which builds a large majority of our roads. We cant walk out our front door and go to the grocery store without running into this problem because 99.999% of every car in the united States is run on gasoline a byproduct of oil. We cannot even go to bed on a cold winters night without oil effecting our lives, because the gasoline, petroleum and choke that is used to power our heaters are all products made from the refining of oil. Today the United States is the worlds largest oil consumer, consuming more than 20.7

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Johnston million barrels of oil a day which is more than one fourth of the worlds total oil consumption of 82.2 million barrels of oil a day. Even using the most optimistic estimates of the amount of oil reserves left, about 1,277 trillion barrels of oil, at our current rate of consumption we can only expect another 45 years of oil production at most before we begin running out of this widely used natural rescores all together. If more than ninety-nine percent of the automobiles around the world use this precious fossil fuel to power their engines and have for the last one hundred and twenty years and one day this “unlimited” supply of fuel runs out all together. What will they do? With so many alternate fuel sources around then world that really are unlimited then why are so many people still using Oil for so many different things? One of the biggest misconceptions is that alternate fuels cost more money. In 1992 the US government passed The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct), an act that applies to anyone who operates, leases, or otherwise controls at least fifty vehicles in the United States that are primarily operated in urban areas this act “ requires federal, state, and fuel provider fleets to purchase vehicles that operate on alternative fuels.” Another act was added to this in 2005 when the United States congress implemented the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT), which was then signed by President Bush on August 8, 2005. This act offers consumers and businesses federal tax credits beginning in January 2006 for purchasing fuel-efficient hybrid-electric vehicles and energy-efficient appliances and products. In conjunction with this

Johnston entire states have begun enormous projects to combat the rising oil problem; like California’s “Vision 2010” a hydrogen highway . This plan consists of hydrogen-equipped fueling stations and to ensure that by the end of

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